


Out of Canada

by china_shop



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Canada, Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-05
Updated: 2005-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-12 22:58:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/130043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/china_shop/pseuds/china_shop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Though he's in love with Stella, Ray Kowalski marries her sister Blanche for the money, and they move to Canada to establish a sheep farm / A brief summary of the movie "Out of Africa" as seen through the lens of the DSverse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Canada

**Author's Note:**

> _Out of Africa_ was my favourite movie for years: I saw it twice at the movies (cinematography = gorgeous) and on video numerous times, and now I own it on DVD. On my 21st birthday I tried to make my family sit down and watch it with me, but they wandered off one by one until I was left weeping at the end by myself. (Weeping at the movie, that is, not at my family's pathetic attention spans.)
> 
> I love the themes -- the tension between the needs for intimacy and independence -- and, okay, I love Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, and the blazing sun and the lush landscape and the soundtrack and everything.
> 
> Wouldn't a due South AU re-write be _cool_?

Though he's in love with Stella, Ray Kowalski marries her sister Blanche for the money, and they move to Canada to establish a sheep farm (?), but when they get there, Blanche insists that they set up a citrus plantation instead (despite the climate; she isn't very practical). Blanche is away from home often. She claims she's working, but it becomes increasingly obvious that she's having affairs left, right and centre.

Meanwhile, Ray is busy with the plantation, but lonely. Being American, he doesn't really fit in with the locals. He does, however, befriend a free-spirited Mountie, Benton Fraser, who often passes by the homestead and stops in with his friend Diefenbaker for dinner and dancing.

Then Ray discovers he's contracted an STD (HIV?). He returns suddenly to the States for medical attention, only to return, in moderate but fragile health, a year later. He finds that the plantation is miraculously doing okay under Blanche's stewardship, but that Blanche is keen to leave, and that her guilt about the STD isn't preventing her from sleeping around more. Ray files for divorce.

Fraser welcomes Ray's return, and offers to take him hiking in the wilderness, during which time they become lovers. When they return to the plantation, Ray half-expects that Fraser will stay with him, that they can settle down, but Fraser has other ideas. He continues to come and go as he pleases, although at least he comes rather more often.

This continues until Fraser discovers one day that Diefenbaker is terminally ill. Fraser's stunned that his closest friend didn't tell him sooner, and the realization that he has too-successfully kept everyone at bay, isolating himself utterly, motivates him to suggest moving in with Ray.

> "I was thinking--" Fraser stopped, and looked at the horizon, awkwardness written in every line of his body. "If you wanted, I could bring my things with me next time I come."
> 
> "Things? What things?"
> 
> "All of them."
> 
> "Frase, are you--"
> 
> "Yeah. If that's all right."
> 
> Ray picked up a stick and drew a complicated squiggle in the snow at his feet. "Uh, yeah. Yeah. That'd be--" He gave Fraser a quick smile, then looked away, sticking his hands in his armpits to warm them. "Gotta be careful what you wish for, I guess."

One day Fraser turns up with a small plane, having just got his pilot's licence, and takes Ray on a breath-taking flight across the tundra, where they see herds of caribou and elk and reindeer, and ice as far as the eye can see. It's heart-wrenching. Through Fraser's tuition, Ray finally falls deeply and irrevocably in love with the Territories.

But their relationship isn't easy. Ray wants Fraser to stay, to settle, to be around more. Fraser feels tied down and hemmed in, obligated and resentful. They fight. Even though they still love each other, Fraser decides to move out, because these tensions are exactly the reason he wanted his independence in the first place.

He packs up his stuff, and he and Ray share one last dance before he moves out. One dance to remember. They're interrupted when Fraser is called away urgently on a case.

Fraser disappears into the wilderness on the trail of a serial killer, and Ray packs up his own things: the citrus thing is just not happening, and he's facing financial ruin. He's going to have to sell and move home to the States to live with his parents.

He's sitting alone among stacks of boxes when Blanche turns up with the news that Fraser's been shot and killed in the line of duty.

When Fraser's body is recovered, they bury him on the plantation. Wolves visit his grave.

> If I know a song of Canada, of the elk and the arctic new moon lying on her back, of the ice fields and the cold faces of the orange pickers, of wolves baying to the stars, does Canada know a song of me? Will the air over the tundra quiver with a color that I have brought, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Territories look out for me?

**Author's Note:**

>  _Final quote adapted rather clumsily from the film, via Amazon quotes. Apologies to the ghost of Isak Dinesen. I hope I've reasonably accurately followed the plot -- I haven't seen it for a while. And, uh, ooops, I just realised I left out the whole colonization aspect. *facepalm* Apologies!_


End file.
